By Tony Marks
Ville Platte Gazette
PINE PRAIRIE — For many Christians the hymn “Amazing Grace” is just another hymn they sing at Sunday services. However for one Pine Prairie pastor, it is a hymn that describes his life as he came out of the darkness of alcoholism into the light of salvation.
Daniel Holsomback, who serves as pastor of First Baptist Church in Pine Prairie, admitted he was not always open to God in his life. “We did spend some time in church as a family when I was young for a short period,” he said. “I did at one time profess to be a believer but it never really had any value in my actions. I spent my high school and my young adult years pretty much doing what I wanted.”
This idea led him down the dark road of alcoholism and wound up with him serving time in jail. “I had a real bad problem with alcoholism that lead to the end of my first marriage, and then I actually lost visitation and custody of two of my kids through a pretty ugly incident that happened while I was intoxicated,” he said.
“I did actually spend a night in the parish jail,” he continued. “I kind of started thinking about my life a little bit, and I was very depressed.”
Soon after enrolling in Alcoholics Anonymous, the scales fell from his eyes as he had his own conversion experience and began to see the light.
“An uncle of mine who was a pastor came by and prayed with me,” he said as he began to describe this experience. “I didn’t feel judged by him. For whatever reason I decided I would attend church one Sunday.”
“I can’t really say I chose to be a Christian,” he continued. “I can just say that in that period of time God made His love and His grace aware to me, and I prayed for His forgiveness. I asked Christ to be my Lord and my savior and asked him to save me. From that day forward, there’s been a progressive change in me and my family and a greater and deeper desire to serve Him and tell others about Him.”
This desire to better praise, revere, and serve God has led him into ministry where he leads others to the end for which they were created.
“I don’t believe that there’s anything else that I’m supposed to do or there’s anything else that I can do in my life at this point,” he said. “I feel like God is going to strike me down if I quit.”
“I just knew I wanted to give back in some way,” he said about how he first got started in service. “My wife and I started cleaning the church, cleaning the bathrooms, and doing anything that we could just to be able to give back.”
This wanting to give back then grew into Holsomback beginning to speak to others about his own experiences. “I did what I could in those first three years after my conversion,” he stated. “There came a moment where I began to sense that God was asking me to give my life to serving Him and forsake in all other things to serve Him in the greatest capacity that I could.”
He began his ministerial work in November of 2006 while still working full time for Centennial Wireless. At that time he was an associate pastor at First Baptist Church in Ville Platte. While there he started his first program geared to bring others with addictions like his to the light. He described the program called Celebrate Recovery as being in his “wheelhouse.”
“We were able to start that ministry from the ground up, and it gave me a lot of experience communicating and talking through certain issues,” he said. “I love people, and I understand that people are hurting all around us.”
“I believe it’s so important to meet people’s needs, to reach them where they are, and to show them the love of Christ where they are.”
Celebrate Recovery helped people with their own addictions as well as issues of dependency, anger, and mental problems. It also gave these people a biblical view of dealing with these issues. Holsomback stepped away from the program 10 years later when he decided to quit his job and to become a full time pastor. “It was hard to walk away from it to come here to Pine Prairie,” he said.
He brought with him to FBCPP a similar desire of helping others in weathering the storms of their lives. He got involved in the Extra Mile program.
“My wife and I own two recovery houses, and we put men with addiction in them through the program,” he stated. “We give them a place for a small rent, and we help them with their food the best way we can and finding jobs. We just help them work through that first year because it’s the hardest to get back on their feet.”
The thing that gives Holsomback the greatest joy in serving God and telling others about Him is seeing others when they “come to know Jesus as their savior.”
“To truly grasp that we are dead in our sins and that in Christ we are made alive helps us see that we are truly saved from death and given life,” he said. “To know that, to experience that, and to watch that occur in people’s lives is really a tremendous joy.”
Holsomback’s conversion experience and his time of service have led him to know what it really means to be a Christian. “I believe there’s one essential truth and that is that the only way to the Father is through the Son, and those who believe in Jesus will live with Him and the Father eternally in Heaven. That’s our salvation.”